


You want a revelation

by YourFadedGlory (HisNameWasAce)



Series: Judgement [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Graphic description of malnutrition, Hurt Steve Rogers, Imprisonment, M/M, Non-Explicit Torture, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 17:14:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7370518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HisNameWasAce/pseuds/YourFadedGlory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stripped naked and huddled under the thin recesses of filthy fleece lay the shell of Steve Rogers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You want a revelation

**Author's Note:**

>   
> _Locks didn't cure; they strangled.”_  
>  ― Scott Westerfeld, The Last Days

“It should be just down this corridor,” Andrew said, the beam of his flashlight cutting through the all-consuming darkness that engulfed the abandoned prison. It was a shell of what it had been just two years ago, the polished steel rusted from leaking pipes, filing cabinets set ablaze and the ashes of their contents long scattered.

 

Clint stalked close behind the other man, Tasha and Phil flanking him to either side. It’d been hard to flush her out of hiding, she’d made it clear she had no intentions of putting herself back on Shield’s radar or Stark’s. But this wasn’t a Shield sanctioned mission, it wasn’t any business of Stark’s and his remaining toy soldiers. It was personal. The farther they crept into the steel prison the more personal it felt, the whole complex made the Raft seem like a playground and the thought of Steve being cooped up inside for years was enough to set Clint’s gut roiling with a familiar sense of bitterness.

 

“What if he isn’t in there?” Tasha asked, the heels of her boots eerily silent on the tile floor. “They were tipped off with enough time to leave and burn their mess, what makes you think they didn’t have the time to drag him off to their next compound?”

 

She’d been colder since the war, cagier. Clint couldn’t blame her, living on the run was something they’d both thought they left behind when they went legit. With their names plastered on almost every alphabet agency’s most wanted list there wasn’t much of a choice but to run and run quickly. Lest they end up in a steel box, like Cap.

 

“It’s the last confirmed location we have; it makes sense to look.” Clint replied, resisting the urge to cover his nose as they neared the end of the hall. There was no air current, the stale scent of piss and defecation hanging thick in the confined space. He lifted his flashlight a little higher, the beam cutting across the outline of a cell, illuminating some of the features that had been drawn in the sketch book Andrew had shown them to convince them of his claim.

 

A wire mesh now absent its electric current, a chair stationed outside where Andrew and many others had stood guard, and the slot cut out for daily meal trays and the pills that went with them. There in the middle was the cot, a slab of metal with a paper thin spring form mattress and a tattered nest of worn thin blankets.

 

Andrew lifted the wire mesh with one hand while the other covered his mouth and nose in an effort to keep out the putrid stench emanating from inside. Coulson ducked under it and surveying the small steel box in silent disgust. Clint stepped in after him, knocking over a styrofoam cup and sloshing something wet and foul smelling over his boots.

 

“He isn’t here.” Tasha, flicked her flashlight over the cot and vacant shower stall. It was hard but not impossible to read her disappointment in the minute slouch of her shoulders.

 

Clint felt inclined to agree with the obvious, until Phil sucked in a startled breath, one of his hands clutching at the edge of a tattered blanket and holding it away from the cot. Keeping a white knuckled grip on his bow, Clint craned his neck to see beyond the fabric. “ _My god_.”

 

Stripped naked and huddled under the thin recesses of filthy fleece lay the shell of Steve Rogers. His hair had been shorn off at some point, the crude buzz cut grown out just an inch, frail blond hair matted to his skull and shedding against the cot in thin tufts. His skin was a pallid gray and looked paper thin, pulled over jutting bones that left every knob of his spine and line of his ribs fully visible, his cheeks so sunken and hollow that he resembled a skull more than a person. Beneath the protruding bulge of his hip bones, his right leg was bowed awkwardly, like the bones had been snapped and poorly fit back together.

 

Tortured.

 

Steve had been tortured and starved.

 

The serum hadn’t fixed him.

 

Fear swept over Clint like a frigid ocean tide, he felt Natasha reach out and grasp at his wrist, her nails biting into his skin.

 

“Is he?” She asked, _dead_  ,the unspoken word hanging heavy between them all.

 

Phil reached out, pressing two fingers to the Captain’s neck, searching for that steady thrum. There, slow as a snail and hiccupping like a drunken bastard, was Steve’s pulse.

 

“He’s alive.”

**Author's Note:**

> Slowly but surely getting to that Steve and Tony reunion.


End file.
